For Immediate Release – August 27, 2024
Media Contact:
Nichelle M. Hayes, Executive Director
info@hurstonwright.org
The Hurston/Wright Foundation Announces Its 2024 Legacy Awards
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation is pleased to announce its 2024 Merit Award honorees and the finalists for the Legacy Awards in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Historical Nonfiction, Memoir Nonfiction, and Poetry. The winners for the Legacy Awards will be announced at a gala event on Friday, October 18, 2024, at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award is the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers.
“The annual Legacy Awards Ceremony is a singular and coveted recognition of excellence in writing by Black authors,” states Marita Golden, co-founder of The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.
Legacy Awards’ Merit Awards are given in three categories: The North Star Award for outstanding literary achievement, The Ella Baker Award for exceptional work that advances social justice, and The Madam C.J. Walker Award for exceptional innovation in supporting and sustaining Black writers and literature. The Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Board of Directors selects the Merit Award recipients each year.
The 2024 Merit Award winners are:
The North Star Award: N.K. Jemisin
The Ella Baker Award: Claudia Rankine
The Madam C.J. Walker Award: Marcus Books
The Legacy Award awarded to published writers is in recognition of literary excellence. Recognition is awarded in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Historical Nonfiction, Memoir Nonfiction, and Poetry. More than 245 books were submitted by publishers and self-published authors for consideration this year. The judges are award-winning Black authors in their own right and current Hurston/Wright Writers-in-Residence. They evaluated nominated books for artistic excellence and
contribution to the literary world.
The 2024 Legacy Awards finalists are:
Debut Fiction
Elizabeth Acevedo (Family Lore; Ecco)
Soraya Palmer (The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential
Ghosts; Catapult)
Kai Thomas (In the Upper Country; Viking Books)
Judges: Natashia Deon, Sifiso Mzobe
General Fiction
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Chain-Gang All-Stars; Pantheon Books)
Cheryl A. Head (Time’s Undoing; Dutton)
Ayana Mathis (The Unsettled; Alfred A Knopf)
Mihret Sibhat (The History of a Difficult Child; Viking Books)
Judges: JJ Amaworo, Alaya Johnson
Speculative Fiction
Johnny Compton (Spite House; Tor Nightfire)
Mary McLaughlin Slechta (Mulberry Street Stories; Four Way Books)
Moses Ose Utomi (Lies of Ajungo; Tordotcom)
Judges: T.L. Huchu, Rita Woods
Historical Nonfiction
Victor Luckerson (Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood
District, America’s Black Wall Street; Random House)
Donovan X. Ramsey (When Crack Was King; One World)
Yepoka Yeebo (Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World; Bloomsbury Publishing)
Judges: Quraysh Ali Lansana, Toni Ann Johnson
Memoir Nonfiction
Dionne Ford (Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing; Bold Type Books)
Emmanuel Iduma (I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History; Algonquin Books)
Cassandra Jackson (The Wreck: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother; Viking Books)
Leta McCollough Seletzky (The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Counterpoint)
Aomawa Shields (Life on Other Planets; Viking Books)
Judge: Yvonne (E-vonne) Battle-Felton
Poetry
Amanda Gunn (Things I Didn’t Do With This Body; Copper Canyon Press)
Patricia Spears Jones (The Beloved Community; Copper Canyon Press)
A. Van Jordan (When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again; W.W. Norton & Co.)
Airea Dee Matthews (Bread & Circus; Scribner)
Charif Shanahan (Trace Evidence; Tin House)
Judges: Shara McCallum, Courtney Faye Taylor
About the Hurston/Wright Foundation: The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation was founded in 1990 in Washington, D.C., and is dedicated to discovering, mentoring and honoring Black writers. Through workshops, master classes, and readings, the organization supports Black writers, promotes their work, serves as a community for Black writers, and continues a tradition of literary excellence established by its namesakes. The Hurston/Wright Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Learn more at www.hurstonwright.org.